Archive for the Insight Category
Posted on January 8, 2010 by Tahlent Team
Despite our academic achievements, some of us stumble when it comes to a simple everyday requirement: written communication. Especially so in today’s “SMS age”, where the truncated lingo of text messages and email shorthand has crept into business communication and threatened to make it unclear and ineffective.
While business communication has certainly become less formal and more forthright all over the world, there are certain limitations to the liberties one can take while addressing employees, superiors, customers, clients, investors or other stakeholders.
First of all, it is important to know that the basics of good writing apply to business communication as well. Clarity and brevity are therefore vital for the effectiveness any kind of business writing – from emails and memos to annual reports and presentations.
Here are a few tips to help you spruce up your business writing:
- Know your audience: Write with a clear idea of whom you are addressing.
- Write with impact: Drop the passive voice and use active verbs and energetic language.
- Write with purpose: Before you put pen to paper or fingertip to the keyboard, understand what you want your writing to achieve.
- Write to elicit a reaction but not to provoke: There’s a thin line between writing that inspires and writing that insults, and you should be careful not to cross it.
- Never let clarity be the casualty: You don’t have to dumb down your writing but make sure everyone understands the words and phrases that you use. While it is good to consult the thesaurus to avoid repeating the same word, be reasonable while selecting your synonyms. Write to express and not merely to impress.
- Be credible, not over the top: Use facts wisely to support your arguments. Never underestimate your readers’ intelligence or take them for granted.
- Join the dots: Organize your thoughts. Set different ideas off in different paragraphs. Make clear transitions between them. Make sure your writing has flow.
- Revise religiously: Read your writing carefully. Tighten loose language. Run spelling and grammar checks before hitting the send or print buttons.
- Be judicious with the delete button: Look out for potential troublemakers in your written draft. Weed out slang, jargon, cliches and overused words. Be tough on bad spelling and incorrect usage. Spell-check and fact-check, especially with proper nouns and titles. Remove words with potential double meanings. Use politically correct, gender-sensitive and inclusive language. Ensure that no racial, religious or other sentiments are hurt by your writing.
- Follow the cheat sheet: Make a list of business writing tips and display it prominently near your workstation. It will help jog your memory and inspire others near you to write clearly.
Tags: annual reports, business communication, business writing, customer communication, effective writing, emails, official communication, official emails, shareholder communication, written communication
Posted on December 17, 2009 by Tahlent Team
With faster lifestyles, global workforces and 24/7 schedules, the impact of workplace stress is becoming severe on working professionals across the world.
Today, stress may be caused due to a variety of factors, not just the pressure to perform under severe deadlines. The cause of stress may result from your interaction with superiors and co-workers, personal problems such as troubled marriages or bereavement that spill into your office life, performance and teamwork issues, low self-esteem, fear of job loss, and health issues.
A little stress is actually useful because it fires away the body’s self-defense mechanisms – alertness, high adrenalin levels, etc. However, prolonged stress can do a lot of damage. For people in demanding professions such as travel, sales, hospitality and medicine, as well as self-employed professionals, stress can extract a high toll. To beat stress before it gets you down, you must recognize the early warning signs.
Things may be far worse if you hate your job. Deadlines, bosses and co-workers all become sources of stress.
Here’s how to deal with stress:
- Slow down, take a deep breath and take a good long look at yourself. First, try to identify the root cause of why you are stressed. Is it something that happened at work or at home? Is it something you are not talking about? Is it something that makes you afraid or insecure about your job? Do you feel threatened by a co-worker or a superior? Are you in the right job? Be honest with yourself and try to pin down the problem.
- Understand the boundaries of work and personal life. When you come back home, take your mind off work. Remember, it’s good to be passionate about work, but take care not to over-commit or set unrealistic deadlines. Be realistic of what you can achieve and work towards your goals.
- Take a break every few hours, go for a walk or stand upright at your desk and relax your body.
- Be realistic about the fact that certain things are beyond your control. Tell yourself that it is important to be calm and in control of your emotions and reactions, not external situations. Think before reacting.
- Overcome escapism and avoidance. Rather than avoid a situation, brace yourself to tackle it. For instance, “presentation stress” is a common cause for concern because many of us are nervous about speaking before large audience. While some are gifted at it, most are not. To overcome this mental block, rehearse your presentation before a mirror. Get help from your co-workers or friends and do a dry run. Get feedback, incorporate it and improve your presentation.
- Exercise. Stress is aggravated by a sedentary lifestyle. Exercise not only helps you burn away calories but also works off the tension and induces sound sleep. Yoga and aerobics are great to beat stress. If you feel you don’t have the time to learn anything new, just take a walk.
- Be open about your stress and speak to your manager about it. While doing so, maintain your dignity and make it clear that you are requesting his or her understanding, not a favor or a reprieve.
- Many employers offer counseling services and helplines, which you must use if your self-help efforts do not seem to work.
- If you continue to be stressed, speak to your friends or consult a doctor or a counselor.
- If all the above measures do not deliver satisfactory results, consider changing your job and take up a less demanding role.
Tags: healthy workplace, job stress, managing stress, positive attitude, reducing stress, Workplace stress
Posted on December 7, 2009 by Tahlent Team
Nearly everyone carries a notepad into a meeting. Some people make detailed minutes of every meeting while others delegate subordinates to do the “dirty work”. But really, why is taking notes considered such a bother?
That depends on what you write in your notepad. Some people doodle, others dawdle. Some people hate writing and prefer to type instead. Others have handwritings that are almost impossible to read. And – face it – some people are more organized than others while some others just don’t pay attention at a meeting.
True, things may happen so fast in a meeting with so many people saying different things that it becomes impossible to put it all down on paper. Maybe that’s why some notepad pages are a jumbled mess of words and abstract shapes and figures that make sense only to the note-taker. Sometimes, even the note-taker has trouble understanding his or her notes when he or she re-reads them.
Some people attempt to make things easier for themselves by using voice recorders. However, the flipside of that approach is that listening to the recording and transcribing it is awfully time-consuming. Quite often, a lot is spoken that is quite irrelevant to the purpose of the meeting. Listening for the necessary bits can be a waste of time. Worse, recorders may run out of battery or stop working for other reasons. In such cases, it is always better to back up by taking notes.
A good note-taker does more than just write down minutes. Remember, the goal of every meeting is a successful outcome. Rather than merely jot down what is spoken and discussed, note-takers must make connections, link up views and outline possible solutions to issues and problems that are discussed at the meeting. A structured note-taking approach can be a very useful aid to generate solutions on the fly.
Here are few tips for effective note-taking:
- Go beyond the words and make visual references
- Be creative and think beyond the arrows, bulleted lists and boxes
- Mindmaps are a great idea, because they can help you join the dots between what people are saying
- Columns are also useful to delineate discussion points from action points
- Speech bubbles can be used to highlight and emphasize the points made by speakers and the responses from other participants
- Thought bubbles may be used to indicate your reactions or opinions
- Always note the time and date
- Always capture the context and purpose of the meeting and outline the next steps
Now we come to the hard part – preserving your notes. Seldom do people go right back to their computers and scan images of their notepad pages. Instead, they extract points from their notes into an email or a memo. In the process, a lot of firsthand information that was discussed at the meeting gets lost. And more often than not, the notepads eventually find their way into the shredder or the box meant for recyclables.
So what’s the way out? The good news is that somebody has already thought about it. MightyNotes™ and Evernote are two applications that help you digitize the note-taking process and simplify a lot of tasks associated with making quick and nifty notes.
MightyNotes™ is freeware and has a great intuitive interface that helps you break text into columns and use symbols to make your notes insightful and action-oriented. Evernote, on the other hand, is shareware and helps you integrate snapshots of web pages, clip text and images and pretty much every kind of media into an online notebook.
At the next meeting, volunteer to take notes and make a difference.
Tags: effective meetings, meetings, minutes, note-taking, productivity, symbol lexicon, taking notes, words
Posted on November 27, 2009 by Tahlent Team
Working with creative people is challenging as it is rewarding. While it can be stimulating to be surrounded by talented people and ideas in the midst of a creative environment, learning how to manage creative teams or co-workers is an art. And it needs to be pursued with care and attention.
The term “creative people” immediately brings to mind artists and writers. However, this definition includes musicians, RJs, application architects, architects, graphic designers, advertising professionals, filmmakers, landscape artists, photographers, sound engineers, nutritionists, clothing designers, etc.
Often, creative people are known for being eccentric, working flexibly and not following a set routine. They may sometimes be asocial and withdrawn and at other times flamboyant and articulate. They are often frustrated by regimented working hours and work conditions. However, creative teams may sometimes be a part of a larger corporate outfit and the rules that apply to the rest of the firm apply to them too.
To manage a creative team effectively it is important to understand the way creative people work, and ensure that productivity does not get sacrificed in the process.
Lack of inspiration is often cited as a reason for turning in poor quality work. Remember that while you can do everything to keep your creative team’s energies charged up, it’s just another day at work. You can’t produce creativity on demand by turning on a faucet, so there has to be an established code of work that is fair, stimulating, and result-oriented.
- Communicate briefs clearly and provide context while doing so
- Ensure that your team-members are aligned to a goal
- Drive home the point that your emphasis is on the outcome of the work rather than the hours spent on creating it
- Watch out for burnout and prevent it before it happens. If people are working overtime, ensure that they take necessary time off to recover and recharge their batteries
- Innovation is necessary but deadlines are sacrosanct. Build a framework that allows for timely reviews and interventions prior to submission or presentation of a project
- Foster a culture of openness and collaboration within the team. Do not encourage cliques within a team.
- If two creative people in a team do not get along, drive home the point that the odds shall favor the team player
- Be public with praise and discreet with criticism. While rejecting ideas, be sensitive to the person who generated them. However, take care not to undermine your own authority. Be frank and diplomatic, but also forthright
- Create a culture of mentoring – allow team-members to contribute to each others’ growth and learning
- Within the boundaries of company policy, enable access to learning tools, resources and activities
- Always celebrate accomplishments and dissect failures together and as a team
Tags: advertising professionals, application architects, architects, clothing designers, collaboration, creative people, creative team, creativity, deadlines, filmmakers, graphic designers, Innovation, landscape artists, managing creative teams, mentoring, musicians, nutritionists, openness, photographers, productivity, RJs, sound engineers, Talent, teamwork
Posted on November 24, 2009 by Tahlent Team
Even if you are not into cricket, you must have heard about Sachin Tendulkar. At 36, he is the world’s top cricketing superstar. In a career spanning 20 years, the Little Master, as he is known to his fans, has scored 43 Test centuries and 45 one-day international centuries. He continues to demolish record after record every time he steps on the field. When he enters the stadium, fans roar their support and adulation for him. He’s a national hero, an internationally admired icon and a role model for the old-fashioned gentlemanliness that cricket was once known for.
What does it take to be like Tendulkar? And what does it take to stay in the game for 20 years, and still remain as focused and determined as you did when you played your first game? And to continue to be motivated to give your best? What does it take to be unfazed when you are basking in fame and the blinding glare of the limelight?
There’s a lesson in Tendulkar’s career for all of us. It’s not just about sticking in a job for 20 years but about making every opportunity count. This is not to say that Tendulkar has experienced no setbacks or that he has lived a charmed life. As human as can be, the Little Master has had his share of injuries and low seasons when his critics wrote his career an early obituary. He bounced back each time. And now, at an age when most players bid adieu to professional cricket, he continues to do what he does well – delight and entertain the Indian cricket fans.
He is talented and disciplined, but the secret of his success boils down to attitude. Nearly everyone who has watched Tendulkar concurs that the man is determination personified. He has kept himself fit and in top shape despite his age. He has sharpened his focus by meditating on his game. When he is on the cricket field, he is a picture of studied concentration.
Though he has earned the adulation of critics he has not alienated his team-mates. Admired by his opponents and respected by his peers, he is “one of the boys”, a strong team-player and not one to let his seniority stop him from taking orders from a much younger captain. He is a mentor to juniors in the side and, at the same time, a continuous student of the game who has something to learn from everyone.
Tendulkar has made himself a legend not only by piling up runs but by creating the potential for surprises – he pulls one out of the hat just when you have written him off. He has never rested on his laurels and has always produced that something special to silence his critics. And yet, he maintains that he is an ordinary man doing what he does best.
Whatever be the pressures of his workplace, Tendulkar has attested the need for work-life balance. After-hours, family time takes top priority. He has mentioned in a number of interviews that his wife has helped him maintain that balance.
In handling injury, criticism, failure or disappointment, Tendulkar has been gracious. In media appearances, he has never been called for unsporting remarks. Humility has always been a hallmark of his persona.
Discipline, integrity and sincerity, topped by honest hard work and a never-say-die attitude – that’s what keeps the world’s top cricketer ticking. In short, whatever the profession, the same principles apply.
And there’s a lesson in that for everyone who aspires to a stellar career.
Tags: Career, career productivity, cricket, dedication, determination, focus, indian, mentoring, Sachin Tendulkar, talented, teamwork
